Vain vane
Our office building recently deployed a large dumpster outside for collecting discarded cardboard boxes for recycling. Unfortunately the recycling company had not been able to empty it for almost two weeks and by this morning it had been overflowing with empty boxes, with many more on the ground surrounding it. Well finally the recycling company comes by this morning and empties it, and collects most of the boxes that were sitting around on the ground. As I was driving home this evening I noticed that they had missed a box on the ground, so I walked over to it to throw it back in the bin for next time. As I walked closer, I noticed this box wasn't empty at all and in fact looked pretty interesting! It was a large piece of hollow metal, shaped like a cow!


(Click to embiggen)
It turns out that is a copper weather vane that someone apparently didn't want and just decided to throw away. Some packing materials that came with it indicate it was a "Hereford Bull" made by the West Coast Weather Vanes company. After I got home, I found their website and found the product listing for their hand-hammered 3-foot model Hereford Bull. It's quite surprising someone would want to throw away such a pretty thing, especially considering the scrap value of copper these days. I'll have to figure out a way to mount it on top of cowhouse this weekend.